“Let earth receive her King!” 🎶
— Lyrics to a song I heard at our local mall around Christmas time.
Winter Update 2025 — Nine Months in, Five Months to Go…?
How are we doing?
We’ve been in Japan for 9 months now. We’ve had our first Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s in a new place—and now cherry blossom season! Holidays are days usually filled with tradition. And as much as I’d like to tell you that we’ve started a host of new traditions with each of these special days, traditions which we plan to reiterate for years of celebrations to come, we mostly just did what we could to keep the plates spinning! Having littles in a new world sure puts a twist on things. But God has provided everything we have needed up to this point. Little Sophie has turned three years old and is expressing herself more and more in English as well as Japanese. Foreign phrases and songs slip out when she’s playing imagination games with her toys. Ezra has now turned one. We celebrated his birthday with friends from church on March 1st. He is weaned and is already eating like a teenager. Winter’s not been so warm that they’ve gotten to play outside a lot, but these two play quite well together. It’s a blessing to watch these siblings become such good friends.
We’ve been interacting more with their pre-school over the last few months just trying to figure out routines, announcements, expectations, and some basic conversations. (Those are tough!) But we love that the Lord has given us a part-time school situation for them. Especially a school that is top, top notch. We love almost everything about it. It’s been a learning curve trying to navigate the religious aspects of Japanese education. Yes, Tokyo is secular now. But the ancient influences of Buddhism and Shinto saturate everything. And certain school activities have left us scratching our heads. If you’ve been following our social media, you’ve seen some posts about this.
However, this arrangement has freed us up for our own language learning. Classes for us have been going well. Our teachers have been exceptional. The school is Christian owned and operated and mostly Christian staffed. But learning the language has proved every bit as challenging as we were told it would be. And we are at the beginning of that process. Momentum doesn’t feel like it’s picking up yet. I’ll say a lot more about the experiences were having in learning Japanese in coming updates. But for now, let me say this: Japanese is a very possible language to learn. It makes sense in its own way. I keep telling myself, “You can do this, Joe. Missionaries to Japan do it every year.” And they do. We’ve met some. But this is going to take a while. There are so many aspects about Japanese speaking and thinking that are as foreign to English as the moon is to a fish. These things will take time to fully absorb. We’re working hard at that. Pray for us.
Ministry Here
We got to see hands-on how our local church ministers to the community during the “American” holidays that are for some reason observed over here. Events that the church has hosted in the community (including public baptisms in the local river) are opportunities to share the gospel with people who have never heard of a church and would certainly never go to one if they ever learned what it was. Missions requires a bit of creativity every now and then. The gospel message just needs to remain central.
Our duty to the church here has been to stay as involved as we can be. And there’s been plenty for us to do. Our missions team has shrunk this past season. The third missionary family that had been here to help at the church for many years had to transition away. Another solid family in the Japanese church had to move away for work. Sicknesses and surgeries seem to have dropped church attendance over the past several months as well. But that just means there are more ways to serve.
The “Five Months” Announcement?
What’s this all about? This past January, we were invited to go to “Ski Camp.” It is an annual, winter retreat for several Christian churches ours is associated with. (It’s the same group we went on summer retreat with for “Family Camp” last year.) Well, we had to decline the invitation this year. Because…we’re having another baby! And skiing while pregnant is not recommended. In early December we learned that God has opened Sierah’s womb a third time. We are expecting Pliska baby number three this August! (That’s the “five months” from now part.) How exciting to think we’ll have another little one added to our family and born here in Japan! Lord willing, this week we will find out the gender of the baby.
We’re not aware of any extra needs for those of you who have already so graciously asked! If it’s a boy, we’ve already got everything from Ezra. If it’s a girl, we’ll just need to get some clothes. We’re all good there. (And that’s thanks to so many of you!) But we do have a slight need…. And the clock is ticking. A new house!
Let me explain. We love our house. It was an answer to prayer. It was a special sign of God’s providence that we needed when we first showed up here last summer. It was perfect for our needs. Still kind of is. But now two things have to be considered. First is space. Not only are we adding to the family, our two-bedroom house is not as conducive to the ministry of hosting and hospitality that we’d like. We’ve already hosted an American couple for a week. It worked, but they were only two people! There have been challenges with ministering to the people here as well due to space. That’s the first thing we’ve been considering. Here’s the second: Termites! Our house has developed several “squishy” places in the floor since we’ve moved in. One’s right at the bottom of the stairs. There’s a place in our wall you can just poke your finger through, because the wood underneath has been eaten out. It makes little prickly sounds too when you put your ear to it. Ha! So, we do need to move soon. I hear that babies don’t wait.
Prayer Requests:
– Learning the language — We’d like you to pray for our diligence and God’s mercy in this.
– Baby due in August — Please pray for a healthy momma and baby.
– House — Currently, we are applying around for mortgages here as well as scouting out rental houses.
– Gospel relationships — There are Japanese people here that speak English! We’d like to meet more of them.
Grace and peace,
The Pliskas
